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Mountain News: Burlingame makes Aspen dream affordable

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen’s newest installment of affordable housing is now taking shape. It’s out on the edge of town, at a place previously called Burlingame Ranch, which is what the 84 condominiums are also called.

ASPEN, Colo. – Aspen’s newest installment of affordable housing is now taking shape. It’s out on the edge of town, at a place previously called Burlingame Ranch, which is what the 84 condominiums are also called. In time, there will be more than three times as many housing units, mostly condos, but a few single-family homes. Prices in the units so far have ranged from $100,000 to $500,000.

“What was once an empty field... is now a vibrant neighborhood with children playing outside and their parents visiting one another over beers after work,” reports Carolyn Sackariason of The Aspen Times. “Trikes, bikes and barbecue grills sit on patios and decks. People stroll the streets, waving at their neighbors and stopping for conversation.”

The design is what architects call “livable neighborhoods,” with several clusters of multi-family buildings positioned around community green space. Housing is arranged so that families and singles live together. Residents come from a broad range of the Aspen workforce.

“The people who live here are the people who run Aspen,” said Kristi Kavanaugh-Bradley, who is group sales director at St. Regis, a condo-hotel.

Sackariason found people “living the Aspen Dream, with million-dollar views, a close-knit community and an opportunity to be homeowners in one of the nation’s most sought-after places.”

In Aspen, and increasingly other ski towns, affordable housing is not just for beginners. Future offerings at Burlingame will be geared toward those who make $50,000 to $100,000 a year.

Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland said that public officials realized in the early 1990s that their original idea — affordable housing would allow locals to save money and then buy into the free market — wasn’t realistic. Instead, the affordable housing program has allowed people to move from affordable unit to unit, as their families and salaries grow.

But given current funding, the rest of Burlingame will have to wait. A real-estate transfer tax and a sales tax together generated $11 million last year. But the average per-unit subsidy, including land costs and infrastructure, was $62,500. Aspen residents this fall may be asked to approve up to $93 million in bonds to fund several projects, including the remaining two phases of the Burlingame project.

 

Chill lift, but hot beds needed

TELLURIDE, Colo. – Lift lines are almost non-existent at Telluride, the slopes rarely cluttered, the powder skiing phenomenal for those willing to do a bit of hiking.

So why would the ski area operator install a $2.2 million fix-grip quad to add even more ski terrain?

That new lift, reports The Telluride Watch, will put riders 400 feet higher on Gold Hill than existing lifts — opening up an area previously called San Joaquin Bowl to advanced intermediate skiers, with some adjoining areas suitable to expert skiers.

The lift will reach 12,570 feet in elevation and, says the newspaper, offer the “best lift-accessible powder skiing on the mountain.” As well, it reduces the hiking required to access yet another powder-laden bowl, Palmyra Basin, to just 160 feet of climbing.

Altogether, the ski area now has 3,845 vertical feet of skiing, but 4,425 feet if you include that which is accessed by hiking.

Dave Riley, the chief executive of Telluride Ski & Golf, describes this bigger church as a gambit. “Our purpose in building this lift, quite frankly, is to signal our commitment to the community to the long-term success of this region.”

In return, his company wants more hotel rooms. The company believes it could have more skiers and snowboarders — if only there were more places for them to stay. “To the degree that we see progress in correcting our bedbase problems, it will make it far simpler for us to move forward,” he told The Watch.

One such answer may be a proposed project called Mountain Village Hotel, which would have 189 rooms.

Comments on the newspaper’s website suggest support: “ I’m sure the usual group of people that wish it was still 1973 will whine about the new lift, but this is incredible news that will open up some unbelievable terrain and cement Telluride’s reputation as one of the best ski areas and resorts in the country,” wrote one.

Said another: “I don’t work for Telski, but I’m thrilled about the prospect of this new lift. Have we really gotten to the point in this town where people can’t get excited about skiing deep pow?”

 

Steamboat steel to rise in June

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. – The updating and enlarging of the base complex at the Steamboat ski area is continuing. Through the winter, the foundation was poured for One Steamboat Place, which is to be 428,000 square feet in size when completed sometime next year. In early June, the structure will begin rising. Some 100 truckloads of steel will be needed. The complex will include 80 residential units, underground parking, a new ski school facility, and a nice restaurant, reports The Steamboat Pilot & Today.

 

Proposals for hot beds vetted

KETCHUM, Idaho – Ketchum continues its review of three new hotels at the base of Mount Baldy, the key attraction of the Sun Valley Co. Like many ski towns, it has shed hotel beds over the years, to the point that Ketchum is a tourist town with not very many tourists.

But three proposals promise to reverse the flow, collectively offering 286 so-called “hot-bed” guest rooms and another 134 residential units that could also be put into the rental pool.

The largest of the three, Warm Springs, would be huge in any town. As proposed by DDRM Greatplace, the hotel would be a five-star operation, with 75 rooms and another 45 condominiums for rent. As well, there would be a nine-hole golf course plus 90 townhomes, villas and single-family lots.

DDRM Greatplace is currently completing development of a St. Regis Hotel in the Deer Valley component of Park City. When launched in 2005, the project set a per-square-foot record for cost of real estate in Utah.

Ketchum, notes the Idaho Mountain Express, also has two other hotel projects in the hopper.

 

Via ferrata comes to Tetons

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. – For summer visitors this year, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort hopes to offer a new feature described as rock-climbing without the risk.

Called “via ferrata,” the system features a steel cable that runs the length of each rock-climbing route. Participants wear a helmet and harness featuring two safety lines, which are clipped into the cable. By clipping and unclipping as they ascend the face, climbers at all times remain attached to the cable by at least one safety line.

The Jackson Hole News & Guide explains that networks of via ferrata, which is Italian for “iron way,” were installed in the Italian Dolomites and Austrian Tyrol during World War I, as soldiers for both sides of that horrific conflict affixed cables, ladders and bridges to the rock, eliminating the need for full climbing equipment.

This system allows people who haven’t climbed before to “get the experience without risk,” explained Jessica Milligan, chief of product, sales, and service for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. The routes are being reviewed by the U.S. Forest Service, which administers the property.

Whistler-Blackcomb also has via ferrata routes on Whistler Mountain, as does Waterfall Canyon in Ogden, Utah, plus three resorts in the East. Such systems are common in Europe, but especially the Dolomites.

 

Durango heir to a big problem

DURANGO, Colo. – Farmington, N.M., is a city of about 44,000 people located in the high desert about 41 miles from Durango, the glistening snows of the San Juan Mountains in the distance.

But it keeps some curious company: Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit. What do they have in common?

All are in the nation’s top six counties for carbon dioxide emissions, according to research published by Purdue University professor Kevin Gurney.

The pollution in LA comes primarily from transportation, and in Houston from industrial sources. In Farmington and the broader San Juan County, the pollution comes from two giant coal-fired power plants, plus petroleum and petrochemical production, reports the Farmington Daily Times.

Another major power plant, called Desert Rock, is also proposed on the Navajo Nation — much to the distress of activists, who say the air quality cannot be further sullied.

The region — called the San Juan Basin — is rich not only with coal, but also coal-bed methane and other gas and oil deposits. The drilling has picked up considerably in recent years — and so has the pollution called ozone.

One source of the pollution, explains the Durango Telegraph, is the tens of thousands of compressors that are used in remote locations to help pump the gas. The compressors burn oil, emitting carbon dioxide. More than 10,000 new gas wells have been approved in northern New Mexico in recent years.

Durango is not in the middle of the gas drilling, but the pollution is blown toward it — and the San Juan Mountains.

“Ozone is a regional pollutant,” Mary Uhl, of the New Mexico Air Quality Bureau, told the Telegraph. “You can take a low reading in the middle of a source like a big city. But higher readings don’t show up until you’re farther downwind.”

The Telegraph notes that the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency in March lowered the cap on ground-level ozone concentrations, from 80 parts per billion to 75 parts.

Of course, setting a new threshold does not, of itself, diminish the problem. “Ozone is a very complicated pollutant, and there is no magic bullet for dealing with it,” explains Christopher Dann, of the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division.

 

Winter snow damage appears

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. – With the snow now retreating as rapidly as a house cat that has caught sight of a Doberman, the multitude sins of a long winter are now becoming apparent.

It’s not just the dog doo-doo, but in the case of some Colorado mountain towns, a great deal of damage from this winter’s unusually deep snow. In Crested Butte, windows and roofs have been damaged, as have benches and fences in the local parks.

So far, reports the Crested Butte News, there has not been new news of any old buildings collapsing, as is sometimes the case in big winters. “It is known as demolition by neglect, which we frown on,” said Bob Gillie, the town’s building and zoning director.

 

Gorman publicist dies

TAOS, N.M. –The artist R.C. Gorman died in 2005. The woman described by The Taos News as his “dedicated protector, publicist, promoter and friend” has now also died.

That protector, Virginia Dooley, was born 65 years ago in New York City, went to school in Wisconsin and Illinois, and then taught music to Diné (a.k.a. Navajo) students in Arizona. Even then, she was a fan of Gorman’s work, citing him as an Indian who could succeed in the non-Indian world.

Upon moving to Taos to teach, she met him and helped launch an early publicity campaign of posters and bumper stickers with the legend, “Who is R.C. Gorman?”

For more than three decades, they worked together establishing his artistic legacy. As well, they collaborated on a series of books, “Nudes and Foods,” which featured his drawings and her recipes.

 

Not jazzed about basketball banner

PARK CITY, Utah – The Utah Jazz basketball team is playing the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association playoffs, but Midge Farkas, who lives near Park City, apparently isn’t a fan.

It seems that airplanes towing banners in support of the Jazz fly over her home en route from a mountain airport to where the Jazz play in Salt Lake City about 30 miles away.

“Maybe people enjoy very loud airplane noise and this Atlantic City advertising," Farkas told The Park Record. “That’s not why I moved here.”

Denice Heidorn, who owns the company that does the aerial advertising, said she had received few complaints. “But Park City is a different breed,” she said. “I lived there for 10 years, so I understand the breed that lives there.”

 

Old mining lands given easements

OPHIR, Colo. – Yet more mining lands in the San Juan Mountains have been retired from the potential of development. The newest batch is 111 acres in the area around Ophir, about 10 miles south of Telluride. The Trust for Public Lands arranged the transaction, part of an effort that is expected to ultimately yield conservation easements on more than 1,200 acres.

Working for the last decade, the Trust for Public Lands has now engineered conservation easements on more than 9,000 acres of high-country mining claims in the Ouray, Silverton and Telluride area. As well, the non-profit group is pursuing protection of lands adjacent to the San Juan Skyway, a 234-mile national scenic byway that connects these towns, as well as Durango and Mancos, which is located near Mesa Verde National Park.

Elsewhere in Colorado, the group has also been active in preserving lands in the Elk Mountains, between Aspen and Crested Butte, and in the Mosquito Range between Fairplay and Leadville.